#yellow legged mud dauber

[onenicebugperday]

@illogicalghost submitted: hi! i have 3 bugs to share ^_^ first is a wasp(?) that looks really cool. i think the one on the left in the second photo might also be a wasp? it flew up to this cricket on the right and landed on top of it, and they walked around together. not sure if it was trying to eat the cricket or what. it was like an inch long and shiny black, very pretty. they were found in southern wisconsin. 🐝🦗

Hello! They are both definitely wasps yes. The first is a yellow-legged mud-dauber and the second is likely a steel-blue cricket-hunter given its prey there! Great black digger wasps will also prey on crickets (and other Orthopterans) but their bodies are not as blue as this one is. Anyhoo she's gonna bring that cricket to her nest for her babies to nibble :)

[chemistfail]

Snack

[celestialmacros]

Wasp sploot

Yellow-Legged Mud-dauber Wasp (Sceliphron caementarium)

August 20, 2024

John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, Tinicum, Pennsylvania

[speakingofnature]

Yellow-legged Mud-dauber Wasp

Instinctively this wasp is equipped with the knowledge concerning the right kind of mud to use for its nest, as well as how to gather and transport it, as seen here. If not for instinct each new wasp would have to figure out how to do these tasks.

[ciircuitdragon]

Wasp (and bee and sawfly) holding year in review

From left to right and top to bottom, these are: gall wasp (maybe genus Zopheroteras), sawfly (Dolerus sp.), parasitoid wasp (Encyrtus sp.), cuckoo wasp (Chrysis sp.), unidentified parasitoid wasp, calliopsis cuckoo nomad bee (Holcopasites calliopsidis), male northern paper wasp (Polistes fuscatus), yellow-legged mud-dauber (Sceliphron caementarium)

And my favorite find of the year: a Greene’s giant ichneumonid (Megarhyssa greenei)

All individuals shown here either cannot sting or have very mild stings

Bonus: a convincing bumblebee mimic, the deer bot fly (Cephenemyia sp.)

[flowerishness]

Foeniculum vulgare (fennel) and Sceliphron caementarium (yellow-legged mud-dauber wasp)

Fennel was originally a Mediterranean plant but it has now become 'naturalized' in many parts of world and is a common sight in the suburb of Vancouver where I live. In its native habitat, it favors locations with dry soil, near the sea-coast or on a sunny riverbank.

Fennel is a hardy, perennial herb used in the cuisines of many countries and is grown in positively industrial quantities. India alone produces over 600,000 metric tones of fennel a year. Alexander the Great may have introduced this plant to India in 325 BC.

As for the yellow-legged mud-dauber wasp, it's native to North and Central America but has now become 'naturalized' throughout the world, including the Mediterranean basin. Theoretically, I could have taken these photos in fennel's home environment on one of the Greek islands. Welcome to globalization.

[collemblogging]

Sceliphron caementarium, Yellow-legged Mud Dauber Wasp, building her nest

[zuzsenpai]

Zuzu's bug-ventures June 8-16, 2024 (insects/spiders from a state park in northeast Pennsylvania) (re-uploading because of file size issues)

I figured I would make a collage after getting so many! A couple of the above photos have duplicates, so all in all I believe I found 65 distinct kinds. I'm still working to ID some of them, but all the ones I think I have ID'd are under the cut. Anyway, it was truly a fun experience. Maybe next time I'll have a camera that isn't a shitty phone!

You can see full size photos of most of these here.

IDs under the cut

Just a note, I'm not 100% on any of these. My IDs are speculative based on google searches, reddit, and so-on. If you think something is wrong, PLEASE let me know!

Also, each image has 9 insects/spiders in a grid. I will be referring to each grid of 9 insects/spiders as a single image below, and identifying all 9 based on rows within the image. If that makes sense. Hopefully it does!

Image 1 (first row left):

Top row (from left to right): Northern paper wasp (I'm told it's carrying caterpillar meat); Hickory tussock moth; Ground beetle of some kind (could not ID)

Middle row: Fall cankerworm moth; Barn spider; Red ichneumon wasp

Bottom row: Long-horned caddisfly; Copper underwing caterpillar; Brush-legged mayfly

Image 2 (first row right):

Top row: Very loud very big bee (could not ID); Common blue mud dauber wasp; Harvestman spider

Middle row: Limoniid crane fly; Firefly; Hoverfly

Bottom row: Elegant grass-veneer moth; Tiger crane fly; Western honey bee

Image 3 (second row left):

Top row: Two-spotted bumble bee; Marsh fly; Yellow-collared scape moth? (could not ID)

Middle row: Wolf spider (male); Macaria moth; Tipula lunata (type of crane fly)

Bottom row: Robber fly; Brown-toed forest fly; Virginian tiger moth

Image 4 (second row right):

Top row: Blue dasher dragonfly? (could not ID. Dead in spider web); White admiral butterfly; Chalk-fronted corporal dragonfly

Middle row: Clubtail dragonfly? (could not ID); Hemlock borer beetle; Eastern tent caterpillar

Bottom row: Another Tipula lanata crane fly; Double-banded grass-veneer moth; Horace's duskywing butterfly

Image 5 (third row left):

Top row: Cabbage white butterfly; Spongy moth caterpillar; Dragonfly exoskeleton (could not ID)

Middle row: White-striped running crab spider; Jumping spider (could not ID, but yes there is a spider in this photo!); Orchard orbweaver spider

Bottom row: Soldier beetle; Fortunate wave moth; Another white admiral butterfly

Image 6 (third row right):

Top row: Tussock moth caterpillar; A third white admiral butterfly (this is the last one I promise! They just have so much variation!); Another spongy moth caterpillar

Middle row: Common green bottle fly; Eastern parson spider; Another orchard webweaver spider

Bottom row: Blue dasher dragonfly (possibly female); Calligrapher fly; Dun skipper butterfly

Image 7 (last row left):

Top row: Another fortunate wave moth? (could not ID); Orbweaver spider of some kind (Could not ID); Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly

Middle row: Stonefly exoskeleton; Ontario sallfly; Lesser house fly

Bottom row: White-striped black moth; Pale metarranthis moth (this one is my favorite find); White planthopper? (could not ID)

Image 8 (last row right):

Top row: Millipede; Immaculate grass-veneer moth; Flat wireworm beetle

Middle row: Twobanded Japanese weevil (WEEVIL TIME!!); Earwig; Bob's yellow and black millipede

Bottom row: Click beetle; Sod webworm moth? (could not ID); Deer fly

And that's it! Again, let me know if I made mistakes or if you know any of the ones I couldn't ID.

[jupiterswasphouse]

WASP REVIEW - QUEEN SECTONIA (& ANTLERS) (KIRBY: TRIPLE DELUXE)

[Image ID: A 3D render of Queen Sectonia from Kirby: Triple Deluxe /End IDs.]

I love the Kirby series! It's a great series for a more casual platforming experience, and almost game I've played has been super memorable. Now, in all honesty, don't remember much of my time playing Kirby: Triple Deluxe, but I feel like it has more to do with how sparse my play sessions were at the time, and how long ago it was, rather than the actual quality of the game. One of the things I do remember, though, is the big stinger of a final boss that is Queen Sectonia!

This review is gonna be a quick one because, for one, she doesn't appear for that long in the game, and secondly because there really isn't all that much to pull from in terms of real world equivalents. In terms of appearance, her body is thin-waisted, akin to a member of the family Sphecidae, her exoskeleton seeming fairly smooth (although most of is covered by her regal clothing. Her eyes are seemingly somewhat mammalian in nature, with sclerae, irises, and darker spots that at least resemble pupils. She doesn't actually have any limbs at all, with her gloved hands floating Rayman-style off to her sides. Honestly, her thick antennae and partially clear, very distinctly venated wings, remind me of a Hornet Moth, more than anything, with some further wing comparisons to be drawn from the venation of Cicada wings.

[Image Sources: iNaturalist, Bill Keim, Wikimedia Commons, Colette Kerr, and Biomimicry Institute, Sarah Batsford | Image IDs: A photo of a black and yellow, Yellow-Legged Mud Dauber, followed by a photo of a black, yellow, and brown Hornet Moth, further followed by a photo of a Cicada's forewing /End IDs.]

Furthermore, and I have to give props to the editors of WiKirby for this observation, it seems as though some of her features, as well as her backstory, may also be in reference to the Japanese legend of the Jorōgumo, and by extension the real world Jorō Spider, the Jorōgumo being a Yōkai which takes the form of a Jorō Spider but possesses the ability to transform herself into another form, that of a beautiful, human woman.

[Image Source: Flickr, Christina Butler | Image ID: A photo of a black, yellow, grey, and red Jorō Spider /End ID.]

Speaking of her backstory, interestingly enough, this is where she gets a bit odd, as she was actually originally more spider-like. In her original form, she was obsessed with beauty, so her at the time friend (later lackey, and even later enemy), Taranza, bestowed her with the Dimension Mirror, which gave her the form we see in the game now. Perhaps she simply saw some insectoid forms as being more elegant and/or beautiful than her original form, spurred on by thoughts of the regal queens of wasps (Vespids, Bees, Ants), or mayhaps this is just a design choice entirely intended just to tie in to the plant theming of the game, with wasps being essential pollinators. It seems as though she was then corrupted by the Mirror, attempting to take over Floralia and Planet Popstar.

[Image IDs: Two 3D renders of what is implied to be Queen Sectonia's original form /End IDs.]

As for her behaviors, it's hard to see much that really ties her current form in with real world wasps apart from the aspect of queenship, she doesn't even truly seem to use her stinger, instead opting for swords (A common choice amongst Hymenopteran enemy designs it seems) and magic. One could say that the implications that her kind feed on the life force of others to survive is referential to parasitic wasps, including the aspect of control (See last week's review of 'Parasitica' from TMNT 2012 for more on real world parasitic wasps that control other insects), but it could just as easily be said that this could once again be in reference to the man-eating Jorōgumo.

It certainly doesn't get any more easy to analyze in terms of the real world when we get into the second part of the fight, as she fuses herself with the Dreamstalk to become Flowered Sectonia, feeding indiscriminately on all life below (not even close to the most fucked up thing in this mostly E For Everyone franchise, between Shiver Star, Fecto Forgo, Zero, and the extremely Dark Souls sounding boss Astral Birth Void). Her face becoming the pistil of the flower and her antennae the stamens, multiplying into three pairs, her wings taking on a different and more angel-like shape. In this form, her attacks still use magic but are also heavily plant-based.

[Image ID: A screenshot of Flowered Sectonia /End IDs.]

One more thing of note are her other lackeys, the Antlers, fairly standard platformer enemies that use maces and shields to attack Kirby, taking orders from and often summoned by Sectonia in battle. They have an anthropomorphic build, similarly Rayman-esque, with the floating hands and feet that may or may not be connected to the body, and have a head that reminds me of that of a Paper Wasp, Sphecid, or Cuckoo Wasp, although they are wingless, like some ant castes or female Mutillids. They also come in four unique flavors! Original, Ice, Fire, and Spark.

[Image Sources: New Scientist, and Australian Museum, Mark Raward | Image IDs: A screenshot of the Antlers during the fight against Queen Sectonia DX, followed by a photo of a black, yellow, and brown Paper Wasp's face, followed then by a photo of an iridescent green, blue, and black Cuckoo Wasp /End IDs.]

Not much to say about these guys (Gals?), other than that it shows that Seconia does in fact have some sort of hive, in all honesty, but I do find them supremely charming.

With all that said, what would I rate Queen Sectonia and her followers? Well I usually like to rate these wasps on accuracy, and if I did that for these characters, the rating would probably be fairly low. However, it seems like she's really a bit too far from the real thing to really do that, especially with her more apparent ties to folklore, so, I'll have to go for just a straight up opinion here. Really, this is a type of character I've seen a few times before, the overlord obsessed with beauty and power, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but I don't find it very interesting. I do find myself really enjoying her backstory and inspiration, and her design is pretty alright!

-

Overall: 6.5/10

-

Leave your wasp review suggestion in the replies, tags, or askbox!

[goinggoats]

chilling with my pals European Paper Wasp (×2) and Yellow-Legged Mud Dauber Wasp (×12) by the creek

[onenicebugperday]

@fnrrfygmschnish submitted: Found this long, skinny mystery wasp in a motel room in Lexington, VA. Don't think I've ever seen one quite like it before, so I wonder if it's a non-native species and hitched a ride with whoever stayed in the room before me?

You would not believe how many wasp species there are, and most people haven't seen 99% of them. When in doubt, it's almost always just a native species you've never seen. This one is a native yellow-legged mud dauber :)

[kaylakat2]

Now that I've finally gotten around to finishing my saved for later projects, I would like to share my insect pinning magnum opus. A shadow box full of nearly every insect I've ever worked on!

(Close ups and image descriptions below the keep reading. Image description also includes all speculative ids that are present on the labels you can see in the photos, so if you're curious as to what something is check there!)

I started this when I was still super new at the hobby, so some specimens are better preserved than others, but it's nice to see my improvement with all of them together. It's also nice to see a sort of representation of all the insect life around me with them.

A lot of these are also in rough shape since I scavenge all of my specimens (usually dead or dying), or am given scavenged specimens, and very few of them were raised or captured for the purpose of pinning. I think this definitely adds to the fun of the hobby though, since each one has a pretty unique story about how it was found or acquired.

Most ID's are also still subject to change and some are still speculative, since I do all my own research for them and am definitely not perfect.

[Image ID: One wide shot image of a black board with various insects displayed on it, with small hand written labels next to, above, or below each specimen. 8 images follow as close ups of each group of specimens. The first displays a painted lady butterfly, scientific name cynthia, next to two tomato hornworm moths, scientific name Manduca quinquemaculata, with two june beetle, scientific name cotinis nitida, and ten striped june beetle, scientific name polyphylla decemlineata, underneath. The second displays a white lined sphinx moth, scientific name hyles lineata, next to a nevada buckmoth, scientific name hemileaca nevadensis, and a monarch butterfly, scientific name danaus plexippus. The third displays two clear winged grasshoppers, scientific name camnula pellucida. The fourth displays two california mantis, scientific name stagmomantis californica, one is displayed on its back, the other on its belly. The fifth and sixth display two views of two scorpions, both either yellow ground scorpions, scientific name Paravaejovis confusus, or arizona bark scorpions, scientific name centraroides sculpturatus. The seventh displays a common green darner dragonfly, scientific name anax junius, and a shed dragonfly nymph exoskeleton. The eighth displays the exoskeleton of a giant water bug, scientific name abedus indentatus, next to a digger bee, scientific name anthophora spp, with a yellow faced bumble bee, scientific name bombus vosnesenskii, next to the digger bee. Below these three specimen are two other bee specimen, a western carpenter bee, scientific name xylocopa californica, and a valley carpenter bee, scientific name xylocopa varipunctata, as well as a yellow legged mud dauber wasp, scientific name sceliphron caementarium. End ID]

[oddman-the-oldman]

Sceliphron caementarium aka Yellow-legged Mud-dauber Wasp

The wasp was snooping around the pitcher plants and flew too colse to my D. binata. these pictures show the story of it escaping the D. binata.

[horsebeast]

yellow-legged mud-dauber Sceliphron caementarium

[sharkyuwu]

Sceliphron caementarium, or the yellow-legged mud dauber. This is the type of wasp that lays its eggs on living spiders, where they hatch and eat it alive. Spiders are pretty epic and cool, so this wasp gets a 2/10, as it looks pretty cool.

Just saw it on my door and thought I’d share a picture

[archive-of-artprompts]

🐝Send in a number + Character and I'll draw them in an outfit or as a creature based on that insect🦋

Allotopus Beetle

Apollo Butterfly

Assassin Bug

Atlas Moth

Bald-Faced Hornet

Banded Darter

Banded Demoiselle

Beautiful Demoiselle

Bhutan Glory Swallowtail

Black Swallowtail Butterfly

Bullet Ant

Bumblebee

Butterfly Dragonfly

Cabbage Butterfly

Cattlehearts Swallowtail

Common Batwing

Common Bluebottle Butterfly

Common Brimstone

Common Rose Swallowtail

Conehead Mantis

Cream-Spot Tiger Moth

Creobroter

Cuckoo Wasp

Death's-Head Hawkmoth

Devil's Flower Mantis

Differential Grasshopper

Drain Fly

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Eighteen-Spotted Ladybird

Elephant Hawkmoth

Elephant Mosquito

Emerald Bee

Emperor Dragonfly

European Hornet

European Mantis

Eyed Ladybug

Fire Ant

Five-Spotted Hawkmoth

Fork-Horned Stag Beetle

Fourteen-Spotted Ladybird

Ghost Mantis

Giant Leopard Moth

Giant Long-Legged Katydid

Giant Malaysian Leaf Insect

Glasswing Butterfly

Goliath Beetle

Golden-Ringed Dragonfly

Great Black Wasp

Green Grasshopper

Green June Beetle

Green Snaketail

Green Stag Beetle

Halyzia Sedecimguttata (aka orange ladybird)

Hercules Beetle

Honey Bee

Housefly

Hummingbird Clearwing

Hummingbird Hawkmoth

Impatiens Hawkmoth

Jerusalem Cricket

Jewel Beetle

Lime Hawkmoth

Long-Legged Fly

Luna Moth

Monarch Butterfly

Mosaic Darner

Mud Dauber

Oleander Hawkmoth

Orchid Mantis

Painted Lady Butterfly

Paper Wasp

Peacock Butterfly

Pharaoh Ant

Picasso Bug

Pipevine Swallowtail

Poplar Hawkmoth

Queen Alexandra's Birdwing

Question Mark Butterfly

Red Admiral

Rosy Maple Moth

Ruddy Darter

Scorpion Fly

Silverfish

Small Tortoiseshell

Snakefly

Southern Hawker

Southern Flannel Moth

Spicebush Swallowtail

Spiny Leaf Insect

Sunset Moth

Tailed Jay Butterfly

Tarantula Hawk

Thorn Bug

Tiger Mosquito

Twentytwo-Spot Ladybird

Ulysses Butterfly

White-Lined Sphinx

White Witch Moth

Yellow Jacket

Zebra Swallowtail